11-10-17 New Game…Valve Tube Cornhole. This is dumb. In 28º temperatures.

Going down to 19º tonight in the forecast. Noah goes up to blow down the city water power washer and Ice machine water supply. The in ground valve cap is open with the pressure washer wand stuck down the tube. Figured the Pro turned off the valve yesterday which was the plan.

He can’t get the valve key down to turn off the valve. He feels rocks in the bottom blocking the key from the valve. He thought the valve sleeve may have pushed it way up for some reason allowing rocks to block the valve.

Frost free valve was reconfigured and repaired after several freeze events.

I think about it for a while and ask if we can flood the hole to wash the rocks up? Nope, pressure washer line is frozen. What about a shop vac to suck out the rocks. Don’t think it would be strong enough with the size of the rocks. Irrigation water is out because we are in the middle of blow-down.

The repaired valve was protected from future freeze events and with a bolted lid from debris.

He thinks he may have a parts grabber that is long enough. He pulls out lava rock. After several surgical removals he is able to get the valve closed to blow out the lines.

Valve is left high to prevent debris from entering the tube.

We didn’t plan that 2 years later the grill lava rock would become a problem.

So the culprits. Most likely cart employees that had spare time on their hands that decided it would be a good idea to remove the valve cover and play corn hole with a bucket of lava rock for our grill.

Lesson learned…If you think you have things protected you are wrong. Give someone enough time on their hands and they will fill it with something that will aggravate you in the future.

We were lucky. The next attempt to save our water lines would have been to jack hammer out the repair and dig out to remove the tube and completely re-work the repair.